The Freedom From Religion Foundation is delighted to announce, in association with the Women’s Leadership Project, the establishment of the Lorraine Hansberry Humanist Scholarship Award.

The state/church watchdog has funded for the first time this year $1,000 scholarships for five recently graduated high school seniors from Los Angeles. The honorees were chosen by the Women’s Leadership Project, which with Young Male Scholars, conducts school and community-based peer education programming, outreach and professional development, offering invaluable life and job training skills.

Students meet weekly with program coordinators and interns and are trained in sexual harassment and sexual violence prevention, LGBTQ+ youth leadership outreach and homeless education. Students elect their own group officers and assume responsibility for campus outreach and other communications, writing blogs, articles, poems and crafting video. They initiated two youth-facilitated forums on Black homeless women, anti-racism and mental health, as well as LGBTQ+ Youth of Color and mental health sexual harassment and campus climate.

Ashley Harris, a graduate of Drew Medical Magnet High School, will be attending El Camino College and plans to transfer to San Diego State, with a goal to study law. “My family is filled with either nurses or musicians and I wanted to be different, to create a change in the law system and free wrongly committed individuals,” she says.